The real when closely observed becomes magical.

Posts tagged ‘cornbread’

Yes, the Internet is filled with arguments about cornbread with sugar and cornbread without sugar. I conducted an informal poll which showed that those who put sugar in cornbread represent the unwashed, uncultured, and wholly ignorant segment of society. In fact, they don’t even deserve to be considered part of society.

Some clowns add wheat flour to cornbread. This group is descended from a grandmother off in Peoria who got roaring drunk one morning and reached for the wrong flour sack.

Unfortunately, there are heretics everywhere. Shun them. A site called Genius Kitchen provides a recipe for Old Fashioned Southern Cornbread. Pshaw. They list one teaspoon of sugar. Who are these people?

In my novel Eulalie and Washerwoman, Eulalie says that the people who buy homes in a new subdivision after the African Americans were run out will be the kind of people who put sugar in their cornbread. If you’re not from the South, maybe you didn’t know she was mocking the lah-tee-dah faux culture people who don’t know their butts from a hole in the ground.

You probably know that I’m a white male. What this means among other things is that these days, is that “my kind” is slandered by everybody. Being from the South adds another level of malice to that slander. So, you probably won’t believe me when I tell you that sugar in cornbread is not necessarily a “white thing.” I don’t know any Southern white people who put sugar in their cornbread unless they moved here from the North.

Most great Southern cooks–and that includes my wife–don’t need a recipe for cornbread any more than they need a recipe for real Southern biscuits. But Cat Cora’s is pretty darn close to what quality people make without a user’s manual when it comes to cornbread. I should mention that you need a cast-iron frying pan, but you can skip that if you don’t know what that is. Unfortunately, young people often need a recipe for cracklin’ bread, corn pone, johnny cakes, and hushpuppies because they weren’t brought up right when it came to kitchen skills.

(Note to my reader in England: When I say we eat hushpuppies with mullet [a tasty fish], we’re not eating baby dogs or Hush Puppies shoes.)

Here’s my advice if you want quality cornbread: The next time you’re served cornbread at a restaurant, see if it tastes sweet. If it does, shout out as loudly as you can: “Who’s the bastard who f_cked up my cornbread with sugar?”

If your parents or spouse serve you sweet cornbread, I suggest leaving our the words “bastard” and “f_cked up” while making the point that you refuse to eat that kind of swill in the future.

“Each ingredient has meaning and purpose. Black-eyed peas represent coins, collard greens represent dollar bills and cornbread represents gold. Eating each Southern staple on New Year’s Day is supposed to guarantee a prosperous year, ensuring wealth and luck. While, I do not believe in luck, I do believe in the power of tradition.”

As far as I know, I had black-eyed peas, collard greens and cornbread only once on January 1. Something bad happened in the days after that and while my parents and their friends discussed the fact that the meal wasn’t a magic charm in my case, I no longer remember what the bad thing was. Must have blocked it out.

Even though I like these things (the collards take a lot of vinegar to disguise the taste and the black-eyed peas have to be fresh rather than baked into a brown mush like many people do), my wife doesn’t like any of them. Well, we both like cornbread and still have some left over from Christmas Day.

Why tempt fate by eating this combination again at New Year’s?

I like a lot of Southern food: boiled peanuts, mullet, fried catfish, hoppin’ John, pumpkin frybread, Vidalia onions and yellow squash, hush puppies, grits, and a ton of stuff from New Orleans. But collards never got into my top 100 things to eat. Neither did black-eyed peas, for that matter.

Maybe we’ll have steak on new year’s day along with a baked potato wrapped up in tin foil and some fake bacon bits ready to go. Of course, if you believe in the whole collards, black-eyed peas and cornbread spell, go ahead an eat it at your own discretion and maybe it will bring you luck for 2017. By the way, if you click on the link above for Amber’s blog, her recipe for this old Southern spell actually looks pretty good.

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 467 other followers

About Us

Did you know you can write your own about section just like this one? It's really easy. Navigate to Appearance → Widgets and create a new Text Widget. Now move it to the Footer 1 sidebar.

A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.